How To Make Affiliate Links: Advantages and Examples (2024)

Today’s shoppers expect to find a way to access products wherever they spend time online. Whether scrolling through social media posts, reading a blog, watching a video, or visiting a web site, product links are actually a typical sight.

Consequently, consumers have gotten increasingly comfortable with referral links—especially after they come from trusted corporations, creators, and types.

The online marketing industry is projected to succeed in $15.7 billion by 2024. Here’s how you may unleash the advantages of affiliate links in your personal marketing efforts.

Learn tips on how to create affiliate links, the advantages of using them to your brand, and real examples of links within the wild.

What’s an affiliate link?

An affiliate link is a URL with a singular ID that enables brands to attribute traffic and conversions for the aim of paying commission to marketing partners.

When an affiliate partner—the creator, influencer, or publisher posting the link—signs up for a brand’s online marketing program, they receive a singular link to the brand’s website or product pages. These links contain the affiliate partner’s unique ID to enable the tracking of conversions.

When a possible customer clicks on the link, it’s attributed to the affiliate, allowing the brand to record the source of the traffic. If someone buys a product using an affiliate link, the brand pays the affiliate marketer commission on the sale.

Affiliate link examples

Creator and affiliate marketer @nailsbyalsn creates content using the affiliate products she promotes. Within the caption, she encourages her followers to make use of her unique coupon code to buy from Le Mini Macaron.

When Alison’s followers navigate to her profile, they will click on her link in bio to open a stack of affiliate links.

Clicking on the Le Mini Macron link opens the brand’s website.

When you look within the browser bar after clicking an affiliate link, you will note tracking information, in the shape of a UTM parameter. Alison’s affiliate link for Le Mini Macaron looks like this:

Shoppers and affiliate partners need not worry in regards to the tracking information in an affiliate link. On this case, the additional elements within the URL simply indicate that:

• The affiliate link directs to a web based store: “www.leminimacaron.com”
• The affiliate has a singular code: “dt_id=526842”
• The affiliate was sourced using Shopify Collabs: “utm_campaign=shopifycollabs”

What’s online marketing?

Internet online affiliate marketing is a referral marketing technique wherein affiliate partners earn a commission by promoting a services or products for a business—typically a retailer—through affiliate links.

The corporate rewards the affiliate partner with a payout for providing specific results, like clicks and conversions (e.g., when website visitors join for a newsletter or turn into paying customers). Internet online affiliate marketing can occur through various channels including TikTok video content, email marketing, blogs, and podcasts.

What’s an example of online marketing?

Internet online affiliate marketing can take many forms, however it is usually a partnership between a brand and a creator, tracked using unique affiliate links to promo codes.

In this instance from TikTok influencer Valerie Sanders, her bio link directs to clothing rental brand Haverdash. The bio incorporates tracked affiliate links that credits Valerie with the sale if potential buyers complete a purchase order through that link. Valierie would then make a predetermined commission, often a percentage of the sale price of the item or order.

The tracked affiliate link looks like this and includes a singular code to discover Valerie for attribution:

To push her followers toward the affiliate link, Valerie promotes the brand in video content like this:

In one other example, the affiliate marketer and Instagram user @weimaraner_blue_est2020 uses a singular promo code to advertise a product. That is a substitute for using an affiliate link.

6 advantages of using affiliate links

1. Increased authenticity
2. Projected growth of online marketing
3. Added accountability
4. Opportunity for relationship-building
5. Ease of use and efficiency
6. web optimization improvements

Brands use online marketing as a strategy to strategically and organically expand their customer base. Potential advantages to your brand in using affiliate links include:

1. Improved authenticity

Internet online affiliate marketing can feel authentic to your customers because they’re likely clicking on an affiliate link through a web site or source they already trust. Due to this fact, online marketing typically reduces the time it takes to construct customer loyalty, since there’s already a mutual relationship—with the affiliate partner.

2. Projected growth of online marketing

Affiliate sales are more likely to experience continued growth. Estimates put the industry’s growth at around 10% per yr. Greater than 80% of US corporations use online marketing as a part of their sales strategy.

3. Added accountability

Working with affiliate partners can provide access to sales metrics and data. Brands can capture sales analytics data from their affiliates through a wide range of tracking methods, including cookies, pixels, and postback URLs that track conversions. This information may also help brands refine their marketing campaigns based on what works and what doesn’t.

4. Opportunity for relationship-building

Making the choice to make use of affiliate links in online marketing is useful for affiliates and types alike. It allows businesses and affiliate marketers to construct revenue—the business advantages from increased traffic, while the affiliate marketer earns money through commission. This helps strengthen your relationship with priceless brand partners.

5. Ease of use and efficiency

Upfront costs related to online marketing are low, making the potential return on investment (ROI) high. There’s no must hire an promoting firm or purchase promoting space. As an alternative, you may depend on your affiliate partners to market your physical services or products for you—and also you only pay your affiliate partners a percentage of sales after they successfully direct consumers to buy your services or products.

6. web optimization improvements

Using affiliate links boosts your search engine marketing (web optimization) since other web sites link to yours. This sends a positive signal to Google about your site’s relevance and rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). In turn, increased search traffic can drive more people to your brand’s website. Established affiliate partners are within the business of generating current, easy-to-find content, and certain know tips on how to rank highly on search engines like google—a very important a part of a successful marketing strategy.

The best way to make affiliate links

1. Log into your affiliate dashboard
2. Add affiliates
3. Create an affiliate link
4. Customize the URL
5. Define the promotion

Leveraging affiliate links can increase what you are promoting’s visibility and help generate recent revenue. Here’s tips on how to make your personal affiliate links in a number of key steps:

1. Log into your affiliate tool

Log into your affiliate management app or tool. That is where you track your affiliates and their performance. When you use an affiliate management platform, you’ll use the dashboard to post details about your affiliates’ sales, products, and affiliate campaigns. Here, you’ll also generate links, find recent affiliates to work with, and study metrics and data.

2. Add affiliates

Add recent affiliates to your associates program. Affiliate management platforms can provide large affiliate networks, which you’ll browse to search out recent partners. Search by name and market area of interest to pick out affiliates you think that are suitable ambassadors to your services or products. The affiliates you select to work with have access to an affiliate dashboard to maintain each parties aligned in your online marketing strategy.

3. Create an affiliate link

Visit your affiliate dashboard to create unique affiliate links for all of your affiliates. Give your links descriptive names in response to the services or products you’re promoting. Some affiliate platforms allow you to create SubIDs—customized link elements that direct customers to specific features or places in your website—equivalent to custom-designed landing pages. Each affiliate link is related to a cookie (web name tags that allow web sites to acknowledge you), which might be traced back to the associated affiliate.

4. Customize the URL

Many affiliate platforms assist you to customize your affiliate link URLs. Most auto-generated URLs are random strings of letters and numbers. Customizing your affiliate links means you may make them more memorable for purchasers (and fewer complex). For instance, the Amazon associates program generates a custom URL product link for every affiliate in its program. While this isn’t a vital step, it could actually be a pleasant touch to your affiliates and their readers.

5. Define the promotion

Define the promotional structure that best motivates your affiliates and your potential customers. This might include:

• Tying links to promo discounts or giveaways
• Deciding which channels are high-priority for the campaign
• Determining if the campaign is evergreen or time-based (for instance, campaigns that run for a limited time only might create a way of urgency to click on affiliate links)

Experiment together with your commission structure to search out the correct return in your investment. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires affiliate partners to reveal their connection to your services or products.

💡Tip: When you don’t have the time or capability to administer your personal associates program, consider hiring an affiliate manager to oversee your affiliate campaigns. They’ll recruit recent affiliates, manage onboarding, and supply customer support in your behalf.

Your online business needs an associates program

Affiliate programs are an efficient strategy to drive ecommerce traffic, grow sales, support your marketing campaigns, and increase awareness to your brand. With little to no overhead costs for marketing, it’s relatively easy to start out an associates program.

Key steps include identifying your area of interest market, researching affiliates which might be one of the best suit your brand (or collaborate with an affiliate network), and creating affiliate links to assist what you are promoting construct revenue and your affiliates earn commissions.